OIR Commander Lt. Gen. Stephen Townsend cautioned reporters that pockets of ISIS fighters remain in the city of Mosul but that the city by and large is “firmly” controlled by the Iraqi Security Forces. “There’s a lot of mopping up and back clearing to be done. There are holdouts and hideouts that need to be found. That’ll take a bit of time,” he declared.

The campaign to retake Mosul took the U.S. backed Iraqi Security Forces several months and cost thousands of lives. U.S. commanders frequently described the battle as some of the most fierce combat seen by a military since World War II. Some ISIS fighters are thought to have fled with the civilian population to try and join ISIS fighters in other Iraqi cities or Syria.

Townsend even described an instance in which an ISIS commander tried to lure Iraqi Security Forces into a mass suicide bombing attack with a phony surrender offer in the last hours of the battle. An Iraqi Security Forces commander apparently told the ISIS commander that surrender could occur, but only if the fighters exited their pocket “in small elements.” ISIS declined the request and the U.S. subsequently saw “a wave of suicide attacks” in the area. “It was a desperate ploy,” Townsend said.

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2 Comments

I should rather that they be taken alive, tried by the local population for their crimes, convicted, and then stoned to death by local women. That way the other ISIS fighters don’t get to claim the “prize” of death in battle, rather death at the hands of a woman.